


Torture (FebuWhump 21)

by SylvanFreckles



Series: Freckles' FebuWhump 2021 [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Torture, Angelic True Forms, Burning, Castiel Whump (Supernatural), Febuwhump, Gen, Someday, Torture, full fic is coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29727279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanFreckles/pseuds/SylvanFreckles
Summary: Castiel has been captured by Raphael and is subjected to some of the worst tortures Heaven has ever conceived. Rescue is coming, but will there be anything left to save? (Sequel to day nine, "Buried Alive")
Relationships: Balthazar & Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Raphael (Supernatural)
Series: Freckles' FebuWhump 2021 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139234
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	Torture (FebuWhump 21)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always afraid I've hyped these things up too far, but here it is. The torture from the "Buried Alive" story from Cas's point of view.
> 
> You don't have to read that one first, but it will tell you what Balthazar and the Winchesters were up to.

“We're almost there,” Joash, the wind ruffling his dark hair, cast a smile back at Castiel. “Once you see it you'll understand what I mean.”

Joash was a recent convert in the battle against Raphael, and as such Castiel was trying to limit his interaction with the others until the angel could prove himself. So when he claimed he knew about a place that had been touched by their Father and had some deep, primordial power connected to it, Castiel went along himself rather than potentially endanger any of the others.

“Here we are!” Joash threw his arms wide and turned in a slow circle. They were in a small, cup-shaped valley deep in the Appalachian mountains. It was a beautiful place, to be sure, but Castiel couldn't see much worth beyond the aesthetic.

“You said there was a source of power here,” Castiel replied. He stood beside Joash, hands thrust in his pockets, and squinted at the scenery around them. While it was true that every atom of their Father's creation sang with the glory of His power, this was merely a place of physical beauty.

There was a rustle of wings, a burst of pressure, and Joash was gone. Castiel whirled around, trying to trace the other's path through the ether but the air around him was suddenly crackling with angelic power. He leaped, wings outstretched, trying to throw himself into the etherial plane only to be slammed back into the physical one.

Lightning arced out of a cloudless sky to burn the grass around him, tracing and dancing in complicated patterns. His true form was struck, his wings crippled, and he fell to one knee at the sudden weight of pressure descending on him.

Raphael was standing in front of him now. The archangel had found a new vessel, a dark-skinned woman with chin-length hair. She stared down at him imperiously, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Castiel.”

He tried to stand, but another jolt of power knocked him down to his hands and knees. “Resorting to lies and deceit, Raphael?”

“Joash told you there was heavenly power here,” Raphael countered. She took Castiel's chin in one hand and forced his head up. “He just didn't tell you it was _mine_.”

Castiel steeled himself, knowing what was coming next. Every day, every fight, there was always the risk that this would be the time Raphael caught up to him. This would be his last day, his last moment. “Go ahead,” he spat. “More will rise in my place. You will never have your apocalypse.”

Raphael clucked her tongue. “I'm not here to make a martyr out of you, little brother.” She leaned in, until the electric fury of her essence set the hairs of his vessel on end, practically pressing her cheek against his. “What was it you said? Ah, yes...I'm here because today you're  _my_ little bitch.”

* * *

They pulled him through the ether, Raphael's essence battering him the entire time, until he was dumped on the floor of a large, empty space with his true form too wounded to fight.

“Check for human devices,” Raphael ordered. Joash and another angel stepped forward to strip his coats away and pat through his pockets. She watched them intently, fiddling with the rings she wore on the index and middle finger of her right hand.

“What purpose does this serve?” Castiel demanded when Joash triumphantly held up his cell phone. He'd pushed himself up to his knees, trying to maintain some sense of dignity even as more and more celestial power gathered around him. Raphael was obviously mustering her forces to guard her new prisoner.

“I want you to yield to me,” Raphael announced. “Admit that you were misled in your zealotry and acknowledge that our Father's plan is just and true.”

“The apocalypse is not our Father's plan,” Castiel growled. He surged toward Raphael, but two angels were at his side to force him back to his knees. “You should know more than anyone. The apocalypse-”

Raphael raised one hand, the rings on her fingers glinting, and light coursed through Castiel's body.

Blinding, burning, pitiless light. He could feel it crackling his skin, singing his feathers, feel his blood beginning to boil under the onslaught of sheer, terrible light.

She lowered her hand and Castiel sagged forward against the clutches of his captors, panting for breath. His entire being—true form and vessel—felt cracked and raw. “I'm sorry, little brother,” Raphael intoned, though her voice sounded far too triumphant. “You left me no choice. You've gone too far this time.”

Castiel craned his neck to look up at her. His vision was swimming with blinding after-images of that horrible burst of all-consuming light. He could still feel it, could  _hear_ it, under his skin and through his true form. “No.”

It was a whisper, not a shout, but it was still defiance. Raphael's eyes narrowed and she raised her hand again. “We have all the time in the world.”

The light consumed him.

* * *

He lay on his side, curled around himself, as the other angels moved about the space around him. They hadn't bothered to bind him after the third hour of torture—or was it the third year? Not with his wings burned to tatters under the onslaught of the Rings of the Accuser.

They had been a flail once, wielded by Zachariah to enforce discipline in the ranks of Heaven. The greater angel had taken delight in doling out discipline for even the smallest infraction, usually with his Flail of Admonishment. Castiel had felt it more than once, as had many of the angels in his flight.

Then the unthinkable had happened. Balthazar had enraged Zachariah on purpose, to protect one of the younger angels from his wrath. Zachariah had punished Balthazar so severely that when Castiel was finally able to haul him to the Rit Zien they had spoken only of a mercy-killing. Castiel had refused and fled, sheltering his injured brother with his own essence.

He'd carried Balthazar for days, weeks even (though time had very little meaning in Heaven). Sharing his own power to soothe his brother's wounds, lending him his strength, and bit-by-bit he brought Balthazar back from the brink of death.

Michael had ordered the flail destroyed, but Zachariah had only melted it down and reforged into five rings. The rings had disappeared along with the other weapons from Heaven's armory, but it appeared Raphael had gotten her hands on two of them.

Castiel was pulled out of his memories when he realized Raphael was standing above him again. She had her arms folded across her chest, her ringed fingers casually tapping against her bicep. “Do you yield, Castiel? This can all be over.”

He didn't have the strength to form the words. The skin of his vessel was scraped and bruised from his rough treatment at the hands of his brothers, and his true form was burned and ravaged from the Rings of the Accuser. There were no shadows left in his mind, no quiet places of peace or memory. He is friends' faces—Dean and Sam and Bobby—they were nothing but blurs in his mind's eye now. He could no longer remember the warmth of Jimmy's soul, or the glory of the firmament, or the dark peace of the bottom of the ocean. 

“Still defiant,” Raphael sighed. She raised one finger and Castiel flinched back as _light_ rushed over his true form. His ethereal eyes, already singed from her attacks, burned under the onslaught. The eyes of his vessel swelled as though in sympathy, the skin dry and needle-sharp from burn after burn after burn.

“Do you want me to find Naomi?”

Castiel shuddered at the new voice (familiar voice? Everything in his head was twisting back in on itself...had there been anyone but him and Raphael and the light?). 

“He yields of his own will or not at all. Prepare the prism.”

“No!” Castiel found the strength to protest. He lunged up, barely catching the hem of Raphael's jacket. 

Not the prism. Anything but the prism. Anything but the golden column, the light reflecting in on itself, the pressure erasing any sense of the outside world.

“Don't touch me,” Raphael hissed, backhanding him with the hand that wore the rings. “You dare to be insolent and defiant and still expect mercy? Yield to me, Castiel, or you will see that your suffering is only beginning.”

He had so little left. The only thing he could cling to was that this was  _wrong_ , and that even though his essence cried out for relief or oblivion he had to refuse her demand. 

Raphael sneered. “So be it.”

They dragged him to his feet in the middle of the floor, at the center of the overlapping lines of spell circles. Raphael held her hand out, her face twisted in concentration, and a golden light streamed forward to wrap around his legs and ankles. Castiel struggled against it, but it was no use. It wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides, twisting his true form back in on itself.

Before the column closed he caught one last glance of Raphael's exultant face, then there was nothing.

Nothing but the all-consuming light.

* * *

Ages passed...or days, or hours. The light battered him, broke him, burned him. It swept through his mind and left a blank ruin in its wake. It tore through his wings until there was little more than ash remaining.

And then...silence.

Darkness.

Pain shuddered through his being, but there was something else there. Something familiar. Something warm, wrapping around his ruined body.

He tried to press in closer, begging for the protection of his brother's grace, only to be denied and kept at arm's length.

There were hands on his vessel now. An arm wrapped around his shoulders, cradling him close to another physical body. Fingers in his hair, tracing comforting shapes.

“ _Come back to me, Cassie. I've got you. You're safe now._ ”

Castiel shuddered and tried to burrow into Balthazar's grace, only to come up against a physical barrier. He longed to shed his vessel, but doubted he'd survive more than a few seconds in his current state. 

“ _I've got you. It's safe to come back now._ ”

He followed the voice through the twisted wreckage of his own thoughts. The light was gone, but in its place darker shadows loomed. For so long he'd wished for darkness, for something to end the terrible, brutal light but now that it was here he was afraid.

Darkness hid what light revealed. Either way, something was always there.

“ _C'mon, Cas. Sammy's worried._ ”

Castiel started. He couldn't feel Balthazar anymore, but somehow the nearby presence was familiar anyway. 

“ _Shut up, I was gonna—yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm worried about you, man. I guess...we just miss you, all right?_ ”

There was a knee under his shoulders, a hand on his chest. 

“ _They're hoping I can get through to you_ ,” the familiar voice muttered. “ _Profound bond and all...look, man, I know the last year's been rough. And I know...I know we've got some things to work out. So just come back, all right?_ ”

Suddenly, his mind was alight with hellfire. The roar of the pit, the scent of blood and sulfur, and the broken, beautiful soul he was sent to rescue.

“ _Hey, call the dickbag, I think he's coming around—Balthazar, Sammy. Yeah, and I hope he heard me; he's a dickbag. Just go!_ ”

Castiel cracked his eyes open, his vision blurred in shifting colors of red and brown. There was movement overhead, voices raised in argument, but he focused on the paler shape above him. It slowly pulled into focus—a familiar face that he'd once forgotten, eyes bright with worry.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said gently. He was smiling, but his eyes seemed wet. He patted Castiel on the chest a couple of times, then gently took one of the angel's lax hands. “Good to have you back, man.”

He let his head loll into the crook of Dean's arm, his eyes tracing every shadow of the hunter's face. “Hello, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> See all this and more in "The Light of Attrition", coming this Summer to an internet near you


End file.
